


After Dark

by Czigany



Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 23:12:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Czigany/pseuds/Czigany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bonus chapters to 'Dawn and Dusk'. The intimate scenes between our doves as well as a few outside perspectives for spice. Generally 100 words apiece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Impatience

The door had scarcely closed when Grim found himself pressed back into it. “Dove,” he sighed, her hands sliding over his jaw.  
  
Their mouths met before any more could be said. She moaned, parting her lips enough that he could press his advantage. His answering groan as their tongues tangled reverberated through them both.  
  
He sighed again as he felt her fingers tug at the buckles for his chestplate, his own hands pulling apart the ties to her hood and short cloak. Her breath hitched as the soft cloth dropped away, his lips trailing hungrily over the newly exposed skin.


	2. Scars

Neither of them were strangers to scars; their occupation was a hazardous one, after all. Still, she shied away slightly, almost ashamed, as Grim traced the largest of the pale marks crisscrossing her torso.  
  
Her death had been traumatic and even finding out the reasons behind it had not eased the lingering pain. As warm breath tickled over her chest however, and a hot mouth lipped at the edges of the old wound, she found herself feeling at peace with her past for perhaps the first time.  
  
Smirking faintly, she reversed their positions and gave as good as she’d gotten.


	3. Music

Over the years, Grim had heard plenty of beautiful music:  
  
Fae ballads extolling tales of loves and legends gone but not forgotten; delicate Ljosalfar arias spinning icy shards of longing like a cloak; deep Dokkalfar madrigals calling forth graceful magics from shadows and dust; powerful Almain war chants building battle and honour from nothing, raising it to the skies; and the salt-flecked Varani shanties drowning sorrows in their crashing waves of sea and sound.  
  
Yet the most beautiful music he’d ever known were those hymns he teased from the woman beneath him as he worshipped the altar of her body.


	4. Chance

Maun Cointaker had always prided himself on knowing the odds, whatever the cards laid before him. He was patient; he could play the long game better than anyone save perhaps the Fae. He didn’t need a Fateweaver to tell him when his death would come. He’d spent years making sure that when he finally fell, he would have pulled off the grandest swindle of his life in the process.  
  
But when that little _ruhk_ , that chariot of shadows and dust, had pulled him from his dark cell with whispers of the weave clinging to her, the dandy had seen just how deep the waters had become in his absence. In a few short minutes, she’d not only escalated his own con to a level he’d never imagined, she’d also reminded him that no matter the odds, the biggest return was on the longest shot.  
  
He hadn’t always been called Cointaker. It was a title he’d taken in the Varani tradition to celebrate his achievements in relieving others of their... burdens. It was an asset of his profession to know what made his opponents tick. If he knew why they gambled and risked their ruin, he could bring it to a swifter end or play it out for still greater rewards.  
  
When Grim had sidled up beside them atop that red cliff, Maun saw what sparked his raven’s greed. Her eyes darted to follow the rogue and she’d tilted her head just so when he spoke. As he lay one of his best kept secrets bare, he lost himself in reflection. Perhaps his little rook would be able to turn his largest failure - he had known the odds, the outcome, the _heartbreak_ , and still played the wrong hand out of a faith he didn’t have - into a triumph of sorts anyway.


	5. Patience

She was no stranger to waiting; as a Fae, even with their power waning, she had all the time in the world. When she’d first seen that scruffy child with piercing grey eyes and too-solemn demeanor, however, she’d felt urgency in her very bones. Though he’d been abandoned to the humans of Moon Camp, when the Knave of Coins left for her forest home once more, the child returned with her. They’d named him Grim for his outlook, she allowed it to continue as a joke against his upbringing.  
  
As a child he’d flourished in the forests. The others at Star Camp were eager to pass on their knowledge. A collective heir to all they knew and he soaked it in like sunshine and rain.  
  
As a teen he’d tasted death, thought it power, and found it to his liking. She wasn’t pleased to see the taint in his branches but he was his own and she saw him off with somber farewells.  
  
As a man he returned, more like his name than she’d ever seen. He knew power now, and death was an old friend. He retreated to the outskirts of camp, guarding them silently like the Old Growth of Ysa, and the Knave knew she couldn’t wait much longer.  
  
And then the smoke came, and the Fae felt the forest shiver with every silent step. When she learned it was Grim who had led them this tiny sapling with the presence of giants, hope blossomed and she resolved to help however she could. The interference of the self-styled sun, drawing her _puieţi_ in different directions, would not be tolerated. So she fanned the smoke to find the embers it grew from, fed the flames with her own leaves, then sat back to watch her _sori_ burn the world.


	6. Tarot

She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t jealous. She was furious, of course, and justifiably so. The little shade had come and ruined all of her carefully laid plans.  
  
But the interfering wisp had also won the loyalty of the Knave of Coins, a Fae whose respect she had wooed for nearly ten years. The flitting shadow had also scuttled her plans to remove the Magus, who had been a thorn in her side for almost as long.  
  
Still, she could have dealt with these setbacks, Woven her plans from disparate Threads and still made her tapestry whole.  
  
And then the little _senka_ had reversed the King and Queen of Cups; setting them right again when she’d spent so long inverting them. So she’d sent the Devil with the Fool only to see the Fool become a Hanged Man and the Devil shed her cloak to lead him like a Star.  
  
Angrily she’d pulled at the Weave, shuffled her deck, and called in her bets.  
  
But still the shadow had dogged her, freeing the Page of Swords from the trap she thought she’d crafted so carefully just for him. With him - with all of them - against her, she saw the Wheel of Fortune turn, her deck falling to Judgement, and she was not the High Priestess but the Tower with Death on her heels.  
  
For all that, for all her anger when the Threads of Fate she’d painstakingly Woven unravelled in her hands, she couldn’t deny her jealousy at the simple way the Chariot had swept her aside for the Lover the Magus had become.  
  
She drew the Moon, the World, and Justice, and left them on the floor of her cell. And then she was no longer the Hierophant, the Queen of Staves, but merely Argine once more.


	7. Rathir: Concealment

She’d asked him to meet her in Rathir’s Upper City. However...  
  
The garden that bloomed before the Temple of Lyria was shrouded in perpetual night, the soft glow encouraging worshippers to appropriate reverence. He’d been in that garden plenty of times, but never like this.  
  
Grim found himself pressed back against one of the crumbling pillars facing the sea and the impish smile of one he knew had little use for the ‘softer’ gods. She pressed warm fingers to his lips, replacing them with her mouth only briefly before leaning in to whisper in his ear.  
  
 _“Silence is a virtue.”_


	8. Rathir: Revelation

It wasn’t until that hot mouth had traveled southwards that he fully appreciated the position she had maneuvered him into. Unless they drew attention to themselves with excessive noise, they were wholly hidden.  
  
She had asked that he wear a lighter weight outfit than usual - something she’d cheekily dubbed his ‘sneaking suit’ - and her reasons were apparent as she silently loosened well-oiled ties. His knees buckled and she eagerly swallowed his groan as her hand closed around a rapidly hardening piece of his anatomy.  
  
He felt more than heard her breathless chuckle as she sank to the ground before him.


	9. Rathir: Ecstasy

The first touch of her tongue froze the breath in his throat. When she closed her lips around him, Grim bit the inside of his cheek hard to hold back his moans.   
  
Slipping her hood down, he settled his hand gently on her head. He didn’t press, and her vibrating approval had him gasping soundlessly.  
  
He didn’t care where she’d learned the art, he’d never been subjected to such delicious torture. Unable to silence a faint cry, he spilled himself in her hot mouth.  
  
As she smirked up at his boneless slump, he resolved to pay her back with interest.


	10. Supernova

Their universe extended no further than the bed, sheets slipping off the edges like the waters at the ends of the world. Fingers trailing fire across slick skin, they folded together in an intimate origami. Lips and teeth and tongues kissed and nipped and licked anything they could reach.  
  
They cried out together and oh, she called him god, called him demon, called him anything he asked if he’d just... keep... _ahn!_  
  
Stars exploded around them, a whole galaxy spun of pleasure just for this moment, just for them. Afterwards they lay together, sated, the constellations above keeping silent watch.


	11. Testament

Every time he looks at her he thinks, ‘It must be Fate,’ before he remembers that it doesn’t work that way for them. Not anymore. They fit together so well though, that sometimes he wonders what a Fateweaver would have told him had he even asked all those years ago when he believed in loving gods, in Justice and Fate and the Weave.  
  
He wonders if they would have refused to tell him; shaken their heads and said his Fated match was out of his reach. Or maybe they would have lied to him; tried to push him towards a villager or told him he had no match at all.  
  
It was a blessing that she had died, and he didn’t care who thought him a monster for believing it. Her death brought her to him and he would cheerfully relive all the pains of his youth to know she was waiting on the other side.  
  
It is these thoughts that bring him here, the only temple of Belen not yet desecrated by that misguided cult. Silently he makes his way through half-remembered rites and prayers, all the while thanking the most unforgiving of gods for releasing her, if only for a short while more.  
  
He lays out his sacrifice, folding its limbs neatly on the altar. Standing over it, he cuts his hand, dripping precious crimson over its form. He smears his face with lines of blood, mirroring them on the stone figure standing watch at the rear of the chamber. Hesitantly, he places one last bloody handprint on the cold representation of Death, pressing his palm over the statue’s nonexistent heart and repeating his most fervent thanks. As silently as he came, he retreats.  
  
When he returns to her, she only smiles knowingly and kisses his bloody lips.


	12. Speech

When the furor of the Hierophant’s removal finally died down, Grim found himself spending most of his time rebuilding Sun Camp. She flitted about helping occasionally, but more often than not she distracted him from his work. Not that he complained.  
  
She brought presents anytime she was away for a few days. Trinkets or interesting weapons she’d found lying in caves or on dead bodies. The whole of the Travelers benefitted from her magpie nature. He hardly had a chance to return the favour, stuck as he was amoung the sand and rocks, mercenaries and _gnomes_.  
  
He managed to find something at last and, on the Feast of Olon, the midsummer festival of Ohnshan, he presented her with a pair of juvenile ravens. She named them Văz and Veste; her own interpretation of Varani epics and Maun’s unorthodox teachings. She taught them to carry missives and to scout ahead for simple things like water or other beings that might be lying in wait.  
  
She even taught them to speak, eventually. Grim nearly choked one evening when the inky birds interrupted a quiet dinner to prove their eloquence.  
  
 _Kraak! Love you! Kraak!_  
  
“Love you too, dove,” he coughed.  
  
She giggled softly.


	13. Sorrows

The sudden missive, delivered as it is by a distinctive black messenger, throws the camp into chaos.  
  
He meets her in Rathir and, when she trips off the docks with her face bleak and cold, he gathers her gently and they manage to retreat under the familiar banners of Moon Camp before she cracks and crumbles. He gathers the pieces as best he can, intensely grateful as the Queen of Cups pulls her husband from their tent and all but demands they use it.  
  
Through her sorrow, he can only determine one thing, but it is enough to crack his own heart and deaden the world around them. He can only gather her closer and try to share the pain, though he knows that time is the only real cure and they will never know the centuries necessary.  
  
Silently, she Weeps for a King who can never do so again.


	14. Ashes

When she has recovered, she tells him the progress they’ve made on the Eastern front. Between her words is the unspoken threat of confrontations. Of prismere whispers and crumbling Fae. Of endings. It goes unspoken that this is the last peaceful night they will have; she leaves in the morning for Bhaile and he would no more try to stop her than he would the tide.  
  
For all that she is Fateless, the task ahead is hers and hers alone.  
  
He can’t keep his eyes off her, aware that tomorrow she will be beyond his sight. She can’t resist touching him, aware that tomorrow her hands will hold only weapons and death. Neither sleep, aware that they might never do so again.  
  
When they come together, it is not rushed or frantic or desperate. They burn long and slow until the dawn bleeds red and all that’s left are ashes.


	15. Rebirth

War was something they both knew well. She had served on the frontlines for two lifetimes and he’d been working behind the scenes ever since he could remember. Still, he was never more glad to see the end of open bloodshed than when she stumbled home for the last time. Her eyes were empty - her focus inwards and her hands clutching a letter he would never ask to see - and he was at a loss as to how to help her amoung the bright rocks of Detyre so he returned them to the comfort of deeply shadowed forests. To the beginning.  
  
Crilgarin understood, perhaps more than he ever would, and ensured they were left alone in his small caravan outside the camp proper. She intercepted all communications and deflected all visitors and he was grateful they wouldn't be disturbed.  
  
“Was I right?” She asks, whispers after days of silence. Her voice is as soft as Ohnshan’s breath and as bitter as Ynadon’s disfavour. “So few of them remain and now their oldest is gone... And the people, still reliant on a Fate they can no longer see.”  
  
He is silent for a moment longer, then takes her hands in his. His voice is equally soft, though he puts the power of Ethene behind it. “Lyria will survive, as will her children. The Fae will continue as they have always done and, one way or another, their songs will live on.”  
  
The thin scar on his palm drags across her callouses. She looks down, turns his hand, and traces the mark slowly. He smiles wryly. “Mortals are resilient, even if we aren’t all Belen’s favourites like you.”  
  
“But what do we do now?” She sounded so young.  
  
He tips her chin up and kisses her softly. “Ah dove... Now, we live.”


End file.
